


one of my turns

by solarfemm



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Drug Use, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:46:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29418126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solarfemm/pseuds/solarfemm
Summary: He could no longer tell his blurred edges from the ones Dean created when he broke down all the defenses Castiel didn’t know he had.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	one of my turns

**Author's Note:**

> this is something i wrote back in my lj days that someone said was a perfect display of disenfranchisement (whatever that means). if you remember this fic from back then literally ten years ago no you don't and if you remember me from back then get a life.
> 
> title from the pink floyd song. literally the last time i listened to pink floyd was writing this fic.

The smell of leather always hangs around, like one of those Dean things he can't get away from, a joke Dean told him once about a man named Crowley who sold his soul to own the world in a thimble around his neck, or the phantom itch of the scar on his cheek from when they were too drunk to fuck and Dean suggested a brawl. He keeps these things for himself. It's the band shirt Dean gave him and never asked for, so Castiel wears it when he's baked and Dean's not around, and inevitably he'll fall asleep in it. If Dean wonders why Cas' bed always smells like his Old Spice, he's never asked.

Dean says nothing about the acoustica streaming from the stereo speakers and just watches the tendons in his feet stretch and pop from misuse. He will occasionally throw a glance to where Cas is sitting cross-legged on the faded flecks of a painted Devil's Trap they found in an old mythology book way back when, and Castiel will glare back as if Dean has personally offended him before he rolls his head again. The pop-snap of his shoulder joints echo the ones of Dean’s toes and for a minute they’re in sync, a perfect parody of each other that’s so easy and comfortable they remember all over again that they were built for this: to fight and fuck and get high on each other where one exhales and the other breathes deep for hours before they even touch. They lose themselves every day in syncopation of heartbeat and breath as musty as Castiel’s basement until they choke on dust and smoke. Then it’s a clash of teeth and tongue and spit and fire as they wrestle each other into the springs of the well-worn, well-fucked couch until they’re so far inside each other there is no telling where one ends and the other begins.

They fit together so perfectly it makes Castiel sick; all the fissures in the mirror of his life that Dean reflects and sneers at because they’re his own and mutters “We’re such fucking disasters, Cas, we could be twins”.

Dean searches him out because he’s broken, because he wants to be whole. But this isn’t completion; two fractured halves don’t make a happy ending.

*

“You can go now.”

Hours later and Castiel’s high has worn off with the last of the carton of milk, replaced by something that clicks in the back of his skull that could be an aneurysm and could be a tumour.

“Got nowhere else to be,” Dean shrugs, like that’s always going to be his answer, like he wants to be here.

Castiel knows he’s fishing for an invite with the slight curve of his mouth, knows he’s not going to get it but won’t quit trying until Cas leaves. Cas doesn’t want to leave; he wants Dean to realise Dean doesn’t belong here, surrounded by smoke and grit and breathing must, to take back his mixed tapes and ceramic elephant he’d found on the side of the road while hunting for quarters. The sun had shone through his hair and Dean had exclaimed with real enthusiasm how someone would be stupid to chuck it away, look, the truck is barely broken, you could hide a stash in here, and Castiel can’t get it out of his head.

From ten feet away Cas sees the spattering of colour across Dean's cheeks that could be acne and could be freckles gleam in the light of the swinging bulb, and the clicking has moved from the back of his skull to his jaw. Right now Castiel just wants him to go.

“Hey Cas, what do you think happens when we die?”

Dean’s voice is the low drone of a mechanical hum he only gets when he’s well and truly stoned. The thought only worsens Castiel’s disdain and he takes a moment to realise, yes, it’s an aneurysm and yes, you’re going to die. It’s not in his brain though, it’s in the click of Dean’s fingers as he cracks every individual knuckle. Dean’s giving him an aneurysm.

“Dean men put pennies on your eyes and unicorns eat our brains. The cycle of life continues.”

“Morbid, Daria,” Dean mocks. His eyes are glazed over and red and Castiel is tempted to ask him to stand just to see him stumble, but he doesn’t because Dean is already melting onto the floor and sliding his way over to the middle of the room. The exact middle, because that’s where Cas prays to a father who won’t listen and that’s where the pentagram has to go, jeez Cas, otherwise the demons won’t know how to get here.

Dean, you are the demons, he’d replied as the paint stung his nose and splashed colour behind his eyes, and Dean had traced a crude drawing of a snake eating its tail with his finger coated yellow and laughed that the snake could give itself head.

“God Cas, want you, just…so bad, y’know? Fuck,” he exclaims, but Castiel doesn’t shiver, too sober and too frustrated to be aroused when Dean is right there in his face still high as fuck and his voice is low enough to be swallowed by Spanish cadence in the background if he weren’t licking the shell of Cas’s ear. The words slur into a string of you and need and watch you fall apart, make you fall apart, get you off just by talkin’ dirty ‘cause I know how much you like it easily tuned out by the growl at the back of Castiel’s throat. Dean says his name too much like he owns it, bastardizing it in the hum of his motor-breath voice as he runs his hands along Castiel’s jeans. All poisoned words and need crammed into the force of Dean’s hands pushing him down, laying him out to pick apart piece by piece of shit for Castiel to pull himself together again. He could say no, stand and walk away from Dean’s bruise-red lips, but he won’t, it's easier not to.

So easy to spill hurt from his mouth and watch Dean walk away. Easier still, to enjoy the torment of conflict between what he knows he wants and the ways he can be too vulnerable. What is conscience compared to emotion, and the creak of floorboards to echo his empty stomach, with Dean’s weight on top of him, knee in his crotch, all hard edges and angles that bruise. Gotta break a few eggs, and huff some paint when creating a masterpiece, and all that Aristotle bullshit.

Dean could so easily be fooled into thinking Cas means stay away, as easily as he’d thought Cas meant stay as long as you like all those months ago. Whatever he’d said then, it hadn’t meant break me apart and lay my pieces next to yours; I’m incomplete. Glue me back together with spit and dirt and oil, trade you shard by shard until you’re me and I’m nothing.

But that’s what Dean had done, and Castiel could no longer tell his blurred edges from the ones Dean created when he broke down all the defenses Castiel didn’t know he had. He rebuilt himself again each time with things of Dean, more armour than strength, more sea than land (that’s why your eyes are so blue, Cas). When he looks at Dean, it's all he can see.

They are sun-dried flakes of clay, too ugly when they fit together; separate, there is just too much of them.


End file.
